Before and After
by Whovian of a Thousand Words
Summary: Two snapshots of the love story that is Taz and Up: how they met and how they were parted.
1. Before

**THIS WAS FROM MY OTHER ACCOUNT, R. E. Nightt WHICH ALREADY HAS BEEN/WILL BE DELETED.**

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**1 - Cruel Twisted Fate**

It all happened so fast. One minute, she was smiling for a picture with her father, the next, her quinceañera was crashed. Literally. At least a dozen killer robots smashed through the fence of their yard and began to open fire. Similar intrusions happened at every house in the sector. There was an uproar as the entire family scattered and tried to flee the laser bullets.

A blast from a robot's zapper exploded in the ground too close to Taz and her mother and father. All three were knocked back and covered in debris. Taz felt herself get dragged away by her father's strong arms, leaving her motionless mother behind on the ground.

"No! No! Dad! We have to go back and get her! We have to go back!" Taz shrieked. But her father dragged her around to the side of the house without a word. He opened up a panel on the wall of the house and removed a zapper.

"I'm going to get her, Tazzie. You wait here. I'll be back." He loaded the zapper with a cylinder of laser fluid. "Don't worry. I love you, _corazoncito._" He placed his lucky red bandana in her hands then kissed her cheek. Without another word, he dove out into the fighting. Taz looked at the bandana. Two pictures fell out of the folds. One was taken today. It was of her and her father dancing together. The other was her mother and father's wedding photo.

She was sobbing and moaning as she sunk to the ground. Her quinceañera dress was ruined beyond recognition and her long black hair hung in tatters. A gash on her leg throbbed; she could feel the blood trickling down her ankle.

She flinched violently as a blast of one of the robots' arm zappers hit the ground near her. Taz had never imagined this as how battle would be; too many deaths of the ones she loved and the destruction of her home. Taz felt so fragile. Like one hundred-year-old lace taken out of a cedar chest. The pain of the horror around her flooded her heart in great torrents and waves of despair. It slashed at her mind; shredding it to tatters. She could feel herself falling apart as her loved ones screamed in protest and pain, and the sounds of the small neighborhood been destroyed reached her ears.

Boiling rage swirled within the tiny girl, and her next thought was bold. She gritted her teeth at the pain of the cut on her leg and stood. She tore the excess fabric off the bottom of her dress. Taz reached into the panel and pulled out the second zapper. It was heavy and her arms shook slightly from the weight, but she strapped it over her shoulder none-the-less. Taz tied her father's bandana around her head to keep her hair out of her face; then she tucked the two pictures inside the folds of the red fabric. With a yell like a wild dog, Taz ran out into the smoke and carnage, barefooted and in a ruined quinceañera dress.

The robots turned their metallic faces and gleaming glass eyes onto the furious little Hispanic girl charging at them with a zapper half her size. They turned full around and aimed their arm cannons at her. Quickly, they fired off deadly projectiles. Taz dodged the glowing yellow and red beams as she fired her own zapper at the titans that took away her family. One by one, the robots fell. Until there were two or three left around her. One tried to radio back up stationed at the other houses, but Taz shot its arm clean off. All of a sudden, she was yanked into the air. Her zapper slipped from her grasp in almost slow motion.

The biggest robot picked her up and she was hanging suspended in the air, strung up like a piñata. The robot suddenly threw her on the ground and she crashed into the ground. With a sickening crack, Taz heard her arm snap in two and felt her ribcage exploded in pain. The robot picked her up again, this time upside down. Blood trickled from her nose and dribbled into her eyes and hair. It stained the red bandana an even darker shade of shade of crimson. Taz's vision was becoming fuzzy and distorted, darkness crept on the rims of her eyes and the sound of destruction dimmed.

And then she was falling again.

But this time, it was into a pair of arms. Large ones with toned muscles and battle scars. "You okay, lil' lady?" The man had an accent. A thick one, too. Taz barely nodded yes. She blinked the blood out of her eyes and looked into the light blue ones of a Starship Ranger. "Don' you fret now, I'm gonna get you outta here." He withdrew a zapper from his belt and blasted the lumbering robots behind them. It then occurred to Taz that the ranger was running while carrying her in his arms. He destroyed the robots that were following them still and jumped onto the closing entrance of a giant starship.

That was when Taz blacked out.

Thick gauze was wrapped around her temples and a cast was plastered to her left arm. Taz blinked and white lite flooded her retinas. "Ugg…" She groaned and brought her right hand up to shield her eyes from the glare of the hospital lights. She didn't want to breathe; her ribs ached just to inhale. Feeling lower on her face, Taz's hand hit a breathing tube fitted into her nose, which felt tender and bruised. Her grogginess had still not left yet, but she sat up—painfully—and looked around.

The room was starch white with computers set up around it displaying her medical information. Her bed was covered in sheets the same bright ivory color as the walls. A man dressed in pixelated cameo sat in the chair next to her bed. He was slumped over, his chest moving up and down slowly. A zapper sat next to the chair, which Taz recognized as hers. The man jerked awake and looked around before fixing his blue gaze on her. He smiled and his eyes brightened up.

"Hey there!" He said. His southern accent was kind of cute. "Glad to see you're finally awake. I was startin' to worry." He had a mop of light brown hair that lay unevenly across his forehead and stuck up every which way. It was streaked with silver much earlier than normal, but it made him look older, more experienced. Arms like those of a carved Greek god were riddled with scars and bruises from various battles. His six-pack abs were countered though his tight uniform shirt; his vest lay on the ground And his eyes, perfect blue. There was only one Starship Ranger with eyes that blue and amazing.

"You're…" Taz's voice was scratchy and sounded like sandpaper. "You're…"

"Oh! Right!" He said cheerfully. "I'm Private Up. But I'm going to be getting' a promotion soon, so that'll change." He winked. "You can just call me Up, though. Everyone does."

Taz was in awe. Her hero, the man she looked up to and aspired to be like, was right in front of her. He had saved her from a hoard of robots. He had carried her to his starship. As far as Taz was concerned, she was dead and had gone to heaven.

"I'm Taz." She rasped. Up placed a straw between her lips. She drank the water greedily. "Did… did you recuse my mother? And my father? Your unit got them too, right? Where are they?"

Up shifted in his seat awkwardly. "Taz, um… There, ahem. There was no one but you that was alive in that whole sector. The team and I searched around yesterday, but…"

Taz felt broken now. Her bones were snapped, but her heart was in pieces. The world had become darker; the white walls of her hospital room were a tinted gray. _Everyone is dead..? Everyone?_

"I found this when we were goin' through the place where your home was," She flinched slightly at the word 'was'. "And I found this. You were wearin' it the day I recused you, so I figured you'd want it back." He placed her father's lucky red bandana in her palm. The two pictures fell out of the folds. Slightly singed, but still intact.

Taz gave a choked sob and squeezed her eyes shut as waterfalls of tears washed down her cheeks. In her fist, she clenched the two photographs, as if trying to absorb her parents from the ink on the page. But it was in obvious vain.

"Taz, I—"

"Let me join."

Up blinked. "What..?"

Taz looked up at him with fiery eyes. "Let me join the Galactic League. I want to wipe the robots off the face of the earth for what they did to me. Let me join. I want to be a Starship Ranger."

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**Because this is only going to be two chapters, the next chapter is the 'after'. Review please! :D lessthanthree**


	2. After

*****MANY YEARS IN THE FUTURE***  
The Starship Rangers finally won against the robots. Earth is ravaged and destroyed. The colonists from Bug World have come back and are helping to clean up the debris as well as bodies of fallen Rangers and innocent civilians. True, the war was won and the humans were free from the iron grip of the robots, but what does it matter if you're free if you lose those close to you? Everything comes with a price, and a small group of Rangers have learned that the hard way. But they didn't know just how much freedom would cost them. Freedom is worth its weight in blood.**

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**2 - Freedom's Cost**

He was my watchful guardian.

_Taz stood in front of the furnace and looked at the long box inside. A lump formed in her throat. Tootsie and Mega-Girl held hands as the box inside burst into flames. The light flickered off the new robotic hand he now possessed._

He was always there for me when I thought I was all alone in the world.

_She began to cry. She was crying for the first time in years. Krayonder wrapped his remaining arm around her shoulders and rubbed her arm soothingly. Specs adjusted her eye patch to let tears run freely from the empty socket. February cried as well. She was slumped forward in the wheelchair with her arms propped up on her now forever unusable legs._

He was always there for me when I wept for my lost family.

_Taz put her hand to her mouth to stifle her sobs. Bug took her other hand in his claw. It was a twitch on the sides of his jaws that indicated a small smile._

Anytime I was in need of a friend…

_The ashes of the box's contents fell into a tray below. They were poured into a small ceramic pot. A device came down and crushed the metal inside the box into a cube, and then placed it in the pot. The robotic arm extended and put the urn on the table._

He was there.

_The priest opened his book and began the blessing. Taz cried and put her head against Krayonder's good shoulder. He rubbed her back with his only hand. Bug trotted over to February._

And every time he placed his arm around my waist and set his hand upon my shoulder, I could feel his love pour from his heart to mine.

_His large blue compound eyes were leaking a yellowish fluid. When they dropped on the metal floor, there was a slight hissing sound. All bug tears were extremely acidic._

In each of those moments, I knew I would be okay.

_February picked him up so he sat on her lap. Then she took Bug in her arms. He, in turn, wrapped his segmented arms around her. Taz saw them and was reminded of him. She sobbed harder and buried her face in her hands._

But now, it's different.

"…_And we, as all others, shall never forget him. General Nathaniel Gregory Up will always be remembered as a hero. A true hero."_

But I made the mistake of waiting for the war to be over so that we could be together.

"_As per the will of the General, his ashes were to be given to his closest relative. But since there is no record of any more living family, he requested to be given to Tazmania Esmeralda Lopez." Taz lifted her head to look at the urn on the table._

And for my foolish act, I'm paying the ultimate price.

_She shakily took the urn from the table and held it in her arms. If only it still possessed his beating human heart._

*****WEEKS PASS*****

She had said she was going for a walk to clear her mind.

She had said she'd be back soon.

She had lied.

Taz walked through the abandoned street. So many children had played here. She looked at the run down houses and yellowing bones that littered the ground. They had been her neighbors. She had been the lone survivor. She continued walking without her step wavering. In her arms was the urn.

When she did stop, she looked at the remains of 1293 East Benedict Way. Her home.

At one time.

Taz stepped over the shards of glass and the chunks of rubble until she reached the back yard. Faded pink streamers still lay on the ground; a silent reminder of the day when she lost it all. She stooped down and moved some bits of plaster and metal away from a small rectangle of brown grass. She placed the urn at the top of the rectangle.

"We began our lives together here, Up." She said. "All those years ago… You remember. You saved me from the robots that nearly killed me at my quinceañera." Her voice shook as she spoke to the ceramic urn. With an expressionless face, she withdrew a handgun from her inside jacket pocket. The gun took bullets, and was from at least the early 2020s. Calmly, she took a box of bullets from her jeans pocket. In the box was a single bullet.

"And now, I'm going to end mine here. That way…" She pushed the bullet into the barrel and shut it with a small click. "We can be together again." She placed her other hand on the urn. "And then we can always be together."

She placed cool tip of the barrel of the ancient gun lightly against her temple. Her hand shook. She began to pull on the trigger as tears streamed down her face.

"Always."

_**BANG**_

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**Yes, the drama was very intense. Yes, most of you won't be thrilled by this ending. BUT! There is an upside! …Actually, I don't what the upside is. Just review…**


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